Light field capture devices (also referred to as “light field image data acquisition devices”) are defined herein as any devices that are capable of capturing light field data, optionally processing light field data, optionally accepting and acting upon user input, and/or optionally displaying or otherwise outputting images and/or other types of data.
Light field capture devices may capture light field data using any suitable method for doing so. One example of such a method includes, without limitation, using a microlens array disposed between a main lens and an image sensor (e.g., a CCD or CMOS sensor) as described in Ng et al., Light field photography with a hand-held plenoptic capture device, Technical Report CSTR 2005-02, Stanford Computer Science. Other examples include the use of a plurality of independently controlled cameras, each with its own lens and sensor, an array of cameras that image onto a single shared sensor, a plenoptic lens, and/or any combination of these.
Light field data may be represented or encoded in any of a number of different ways, including (but not limited to) as a 4D image, as a 2D array of 2D disk images such as described in Ng et al., as a 2D array of 2D images of a scene taken from different perspectives such as would be captured by an array of cameras (and which are known as “sub-aperture” images in Ng et al.), and as any combination of these.
Whichever representation is used, light field data captured by a light field capture device may be processed to produce a 2D image that is suitable for display or output. Such light field processing can include (but is not limited to) generating refocused images, generating perspective views of a scene, generating depth maps of a scene, generating all-in-focus or extended depth of field (EDOF) images, generating parallax-shifted or perspective views of a scene, generating stereo image pairs, and/or any combination of these. Additionally, such generated 2D images may be modified or annotated based on the results of analysis of the light field data performed by algorithms that process the captured light field data.